The Experimental Notebook Doubles Project: Part 1

Using two SLRs, a paint pen, and some ingenuity, can you control your double exposures, but still stay spontaneous? Find out after the jump!

Ever since I started with Lomography over a year ago, I’ve been fascinated with doubles, film swaps, masks, and splitzers. The element of randomness and unpredictability introduced by this process motivated me to try new things, take risks, and experiment.

I’ve done some film swaps), and shot lots of doubles with myself, and turned the lens cap of nearly every camera I own into a splitzer) , but something was still missing.

Suddenly it hit me, like a bolt out of the blue. When you shoot a photo, some areas are left black, to correspond to the black or shadowed areas in the picture. When a double is shot, the area where it’s shown the most is on the black in the previous shot. What if I could shape or control that black?

I grabbed a sheet of printer paper, my black Posca paint marker and ran out into the living room with my Diana Mini & flash. I scribbled a deep black circle in the middle of the paper, then snapped a picture, with flash. Then I turned to my wife (who had been watching the whole escapade with a bemused expression) & snapped a (not terribly flattering) photo of her.

This is her “What are you doing?” face.

I probably should have waited for the paint to dry, as I got some serious shine from the puddles of still-liquid paint. But the theory was sound!

Now to plan. I wanted to do things scientifically (that is, to a scientific method) but still retain the unpredictability that makes doubles (and Lomography) so much fun. And with film, experiments always involve trial and error. I’m happy to do the trials, to help YOU avoid the error!

I decided right away that my first layer of photos should be shot with my Canon EOS 3000N: it has ISO control, autofocus, and a built-in flash, which are all essential for indoors, close-up, in-focus shots of notebooks and paint. The primary reason, though, was how it loads film.

Image via Buktus

When you load a roll into the camera, and close the back door, there’s a rapid whir, as the entire roll is unspooled. Then each time you take a photo, the exposed film is pulled into the cartridge backwards, so your first shot is 36, then 35, 34, etc.

There are two upsides to this odd system. 1) If you accidently open the back of the camera, your already-taken shots are safe, and 2) you can wait until there is one shot left, open the back of the camera, and reshoot the roll, while only sacrificing one frame.

I’ve since invested in some two-sided tape, a film puller, and cameras liek the LC-A+ who make it easy to stop just before winding all the way back, but at the time, this was my only way to reshoot a roll.

I loaded a roll of 400 ISO film into the Canon, set the ISO to 800, and got set.

My first thought was that I could use high-contrast black-and-white images from the internet displayed on my monitor as my backdrops, but that very quickly felt like cheating. I needed to be making my own backdrops.

I grabbed my Posca pen, a fat notepad, and started scribbling. I stuck with basic shaped, occasionally words, and did some with flash and some without. I even tried to use some strips of film on my monitor, some of my drawings, a record, close-ups of some of my cameras, and a theatre mask I had on my shelf.

I got to the end, opened the back to sacrifice my last frame, wound back the film & hid the roll among my others, marking it only with a small X that I wouldn’t notice. I ended up shooting it down around Circular Quay, and up into the city with my Olympus OM-1.

The results came in, and here’s how they stacked up:

The computer-screen shots came out fine, but no one could mistake the black-and-white backdrops for mine:

Speaking of the flash, it ended up being the biggest variable when it came to whether a shot worked or didn’t. Without a flash, or if the flash didn’t strike directly, the pages looked yellow, and the picture began to bleed through:

Helena Carrington is an illustrator who is inspired by travel, especially buildings, architecture, and anything discovered while wandering the winding streets of cities and towns. She prints her analogue-loving illustrations onto notebooks, cushions and badges. We especially love her camera and typewriter illustrations and are offering two lucky people some Helena Carrington goodies! Learn how you can win goodies after the jump.

Shop News

Petzval lens are designed for a Canon or Nikon SLR mounts and a selection of brass or black for each camera brand is available in our stores. And start shooting with images full of sharpness, crispness and bokeh effects!

One of the most popular works of art in history, a fresco painting by Michaelangelo, was recreated by a food artist using a whopping amount of sweet stuff. Find out more about this tasty rendition after the jump!

Ever since light painting was invented, it inspired artists from all around the globe to magical creations that capture hidden movements and reinvent the world we live in. "Life is a fairy tale, stay wild little child!" is what they want to tell us. Bringing light to life became the next challenge for anyone rigged with a film camera and a creative mind.
Now, how can you take your analogue light paintings from the ordinary to the outstanding? After the carriage came the car, so we definitely need some spacy inventions to follow the old school light pen. So here it is, our new best friend: The Pixelstick!

Some time ago, my parents-in-law gave me an old Polaroid camera that they used during my wife's childhood. After some investigation, I found out that Polaroid had stopped making instant film. But the factory in Enschedé, the Netherlands had been taken over by The Impossible Project, so I bought a package of fresh film and gave it a try!

Photography has progressed into a myriad of processes and genres but there are still some people who passionately create imagery using the traditional tools that started it all. Photographer Alex Timmermans is one of those them. See his wet collodion photographs after the jump.

What are your weekends like? Do you usually go on a date? Or perhaps you hang out with your family? Is playing video games on top of your weekend activities? I used to do those things. But it all changed since I met film photography. Find out more after the jump!

Where are you headed to this summer? Where I'm from summer has ended too soon, so I'm still daydreaming of sand and seafoam. I decided to check out the archives for some cool beach-y snapshots and came across a lot of interesting underwater photos! Check out my finds after the jump; hopefully this list will inspire you to grab a Fisheye Sub or a Krab, along with your Fisheye cameras and LC-A+, for some underwater adventure.

In celebration of the mindblowing solar eclipse we had the other day, we ran a competition and asked you to tag your analogue photos centered around our great big yellow friend! Check out the winners now!